Tag Archives: non-doms

Mansion tax is not Land Value Tax, but it is a place to start down the road to shifting a significant part of the tax base from income to wealth.

There seems little argument that mansion tax would be a more effective method of taxing non-resident Non-Doms who acquired over 60% of the properties valued at over £2m in recent times.

The inequalities in wealth in the UK far outstrip inequalities in income. The top 10% of households own more wealth than the rest put together: 0.3 per cent of Britain’s population owns 69 per cent of its land.

David Cameron’s comments over the weekend that he wants to cut tax but now is not the time gives a very strong indication as to what the overall impact will be of any new measures in next month’s Budget – no net tax cuts. But no net tax cuts is not the same as no tax cuts.

Two different ideas were also floated over the weekend, from credible looking sources even if they were also both formally denied by the government. They were to move even further towards the planned £10,000 basic income tax allowance and also to tax non-doms …

I’d mentioned previously that Conservative peers McAlpine and Laidlaw have chosen to quit the Lords rather than have to end their non-dom tax status. With the deadline for making a final decision approaching they have been joined by a third Conservative peer – Lord Bagri – and a crossbencher – Baroness Dunn.

A fourth Conservative peer, Lord Ashcroft, has instead given up his non-dom status as has the Labour peer, Lord Paul.

UPDATE: Lord Foster has also quit the Lords in order to preserve his tax status, though from the Parliamentary records it doesn’t looks as if he was ever …

A footnote to our previous coverage of Lords McAlpine and Laidlaw, two non-dom Conservative members of the House of Lords. They had both for a long time been unmoved by criticism of their tax affairs, but ahead of changes to the law they have both decided to give up their seats in the Lords.

Lord McAlpine’s case was relatively straight-forward, but Lord Laidlaw’s case had the added twist that he broke a promise he made on being appointed. Indeed, the Lords Appointment Commission was subsequently moved to say that they would not have authorised his peerage if they had known …

Sometimes good intentions don’t quite result in the good outcomes you’d wish. In this case, the issue is a recommendation from the Committee on Standards in Public Life that general election candidates should have to publish their financial interests just as MPs do.

The logic is a good one: if you’re a voter wanting to chose between candidates, it’s a bit odd if you only know about the financial interests of an MP standing for re-election but not of the people they’re up against. You want to know the interests before you cast your vote, not find out afterwards whether or not you should regret your choice.

However, as the committee recognised, its proposals came out too late to change the law for the 2010 general election. Therefore instead the Ministry of Justice has just published a voluntary scheme, detailing a recommended set of questions that candidates should answer about their financial interests.

Perhaps the most controversial will be the section on tax, where people are asked if:

I confirm that, for the tax year 2008/09, I have not claimed to be, or been treated as not resident, not ordinarily resident or non-domiciled in the UK for tax purposes.

Non-doms are a controversial issues anyway; the appearance of this recommendation just before an election is unlikely to cool such partisan passions. When neither Parliament nor the Committee on Standards in Public Life have decided on such a rule (so far – and I hope they do in due course), should the Ministry of Justice unilaterally be slipping it in to a report so soon before an election?

Overall, the recommendations themselves acknowledge that they go beyond what is currently required of MPs. To require candidates to publish the same information as is required of MPs makes obvious sense; for a government ministry to go beyond that off its own bat could turn out to be quite controversial.

With a voluntary code, published rather late in the day and plenty of scope for individual candidates to partially answer the questions, we’re unlikely to see a triumph of transparency that results in voters being significantly better informed. However, it will at the very least provide a test of the different provisions which should make for better legislation when the whole process most likely becomes law during the next Parliament.

2 Must-Read Blog Posts

Tories in Devon and Cornwall set themselves a target of raising £13,000 in an Obama-style online donate-now campaign, perhaps in an attempt to wean themselves off the Ashcroft millions. How much did they raise?

Stephen Glenn picks up on the news that Lord Paul has said he will voluntarily end his non-dom status from April, whether required to or not, and asks what it means for the Tory “they do it too” defence.

Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.